ᐅ L-shaped house on a trapezoidal plot of land

[A friendly hello] to the forum community from the tri-border area A/CH/D!

After spending several days browsing here first as a guest and now as a registered user, and wishing some posts were available in book format – so much information, excitement & entertainment – I’ll briefly introduce myself and start my first thread (the first of probably many to come 😉)

The [short] facts about the topic (more detailed info will follow once the first floor plans are ready; I’ll answer the list of questions there since it seems more appropriate):


We have been talking for years about tearing down our parents’ house (about 200 years old, oil and wood stoves only in occupied rooms, not all rooms properly insulated, ceiling and room heights so low it’s frustrating… can you feel my enthusiasm? … but it does have a very nice location – except for the [lovely] relatives who built next door – see attachment) and building something new instead. Finally, *hurray*, we now have a timeline and a budget.

• The land is in Austria/ Vorarlberg near Lake Constance (no lake view… that would be something), just over 700 sqm (7,535 sq ft) – a large protected area to the southwest – level ground
• Originally planned about 120 sqm (1,292 sq ft) living space for two people (as mentioned, more details to come… otherwise I’ll probably annoy you a lot in this first post and have many questions later that will keep you busy for a while)
• Ground floor + 1st floor – no basement – flat roof
• We will live upstairs and sleep downstairs (that’s a fact; it will be hard to change our minds on that). If necessary, we’ll have a stairlift or a small elevator.

Attached are pictures of the land and our house – the one with the red roof on the *curvy corner* (I can upload photos of the garden and views from the property on request) and my first plans. Honestly, the initial plan was created with an online planner, fully furnished, with decorations, pictures and all my plants – and there are quite a few *gg* . It was quite a challenge remodeling everything every time a wall was changed.

But I’m somewhat teachable and have now gotten a ruler, pencil, and of course an eraser. I’m no longer drawing decorations, and I’ll get graph paper soon, I promise!

I hope you can follow the plan; only the exterior walls are drawn, marked in red on the ground floor and orange hatch for the upper floor. The plot dimensions and the 3 m (10 ft) setback distance are also indicated. South is at the bottom as usual … until now in my plans the bottom was always where I placed the entrance, but as I said, I’m learning…

Now that you’ve had a look here, I’m interested in what you would build differently and how the cost differences are roughly affected by walls with flush corners, more corners and edges, shifted upper floors, etc. The question is less about why the garage length varies or why wall lengths differ from plan to plan, but rather about the basic layout and location and to what extent extras impact costs financially.

I hope I included some informative data (which should be highlighted) and now I’ll let you critique me — I’m really looking forward to your opinions and suggestions so that our first house won’t be built for the enemy…. because building three times is out of the question.

PS: In case no one noticed, I really don’t have a clue about planning, so in plain English: a complete novice 🙂